Comments on The General Blog of Crime: Thoughts on Philly Police Video?

I would have to disagree with your conclusion the ...

2008-05-13T06:57:00.000-04:00

I would have to disagree with your conclusion the "the good cops are the minority". I'm in no way defending the Philly officers. I understand the situation that might have lead them to their actions, but would never defend the choices they made.

I've seen enough police training and received some myself. If you think you have a carload of armed suspects who just shot a colleague, you don't charge the vehicle en masse with weapons drawn. Officers are trained in very detailed ways to conduct high-risk felony traffic stops in a way that mitigates possible risk. This approach was far removed from anything akin to that level of training and caution.

There are a few bad apples. In some agencies, it is more than a few. However in the last 20 years I've spent around 5000 working with and observing police officers (never as an officer). I have seen questionable conduct. I have seen illegal conduct. Those incidents, however, were few and far between and none ever came anywhere close to this level of violence.

There are "bad" people in all occupations. These officers would probably have been problematic employees if they worked at the local McDonalds.

What we need to ask ourselves is how does an organization's culture evolve to allow such conduct to be viewed as "safe" and acceptable? In Gates' LAPD it was arguable from the Chief's office on down ("compliance through pain" was the mantra of training"). Why haven't we found better ways to screen out these types of potential employees at the point of application in policing?

There is no excuse for this brutality. None of th...

2008-05-09T21:16:00.000-04:00

There is no excuse for this brutality. None of the men were fighting back, yet they were kicked and beaten. All of the officers involved need to be fully prosecuted for assault with intent. No deals. No excuses. No special protection in prison. For too long, police have considered themselves public masters instead of public servants. They no longer protect the public--only each other. In fact, the public has a better chance with the criminal element; at least with them, a person can defend themselves. Trying to protect yourself from an officers harasssment and abuse is in itself a crime. Law enforcement and the judicial system keep saying it is only a few bad apples that are abusive, yet watching the video and doing the research it is very easy to see that the good cops are the minority.

It's always difficult to pin-point exactly where t...

2008-05-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

It's always difficult to pin-point exactly where the line is regarding use of force in these instances. On the hand, considering the history of racial tension and unreasonable force, it is easy to see why the community at large would be upset. On the other hand, the officers had numerous reasons to view the suspects as dangerous (even outside of the fact that they were believed to be related to the shooting of a fellow officer).

In my dissertation, I found that the most consistently statisticly significant effects were for the variables dealing with the officers' perceptions of danger (e.g. the suspect was known to carry a weapon; the call was for a violent crime; the lighting in the area was poor).

That said, I am definitely a bit of an officer apologist (although perhaps not unrightfully so), having spent close to 250 hours riding with patrol officers. I was continually amazed at the amount of restraint shown by officers to verbal and physical provocation, often resulting in the officers not reacting when they would have clearly been justified in doing so.